Adolph Kiefer
| Personal information | |||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Full name | Adolph Gustav Kiefer | ||||||||||||
| Nickname(s) | "Sonny Boy" | ||||||||||||
| National team |
 United States
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| Born |
June 27, 1918 Chicago, Illinois |
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| Sport | |||||||||||||
| Sport | Swimming | ||||||||||||
| Strokes | Backstroke | ||||||||||||
| Club | Lake Shore Athletic Club | ||||||||||||
| College team | University of Texas | ||||||||||||
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Medal record
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Adolph Gustav Kiefer (born June 27, 1918) is an American former competition swimmer, oldest living American Olympic champion, last Olympic champion of Berlin, former world record-holder, and inventor and innovator of new products related to aquatics competition. He was the first man in the world to swim 100-yard backstroke in under one minute.
Kiefer was born as son of German immigrants in Chicago, Illinois and there attended Roosevelt High School (1936). He then attended the University of Texas at Austin (1939), and Columbia College (1940).
He became the first man to break the one-minute mark in the 100-yard backstroke while competing as a 16-year-old in the Illinois High School Championships of 1935, swimming 59.8 seconds. His 1936 Illinois state championship backstroke time of 58.5 seconds was the Illinois state high-school record until 1960. On April 6, 1940 Kiefer set another world record, swimming the 100-yard backstroke in 57.9 seconds. He broke twenty-three records after breaking the one-minute backstroke mark. Kiefer set a world record for 100-meter backstroke of 1:04.8 on January 18, 1936 at Brennan Pools in Detroit, Michigan.
Seventeen-year-old Kiefer represented the United States at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, Germany. On August 14, Kiefer won the gold medal in the men's 100-meter backstroke. He set new Olympic records in the first-round heats (1:06.9), the second-round heats (1:06.8) and the event final (1:05.9). His Olympic Record would stand for over 20 years, finally broken by David Theile in the 1956 Summer Olympics.
He returned home a national hero, and began traveling with other U.S. Olympic medalists on a tour of Europe, China, Japan, and South America, during which he challenged other great swimmers in those locations to individual races.
In over 2,000 races, Kiefer lost only twice. At the National AAU swimming championship in April 1943, University of Michigan All-American swimmer Harry Holiday, Jr. finally went head-to-head with world-record holder Kiefer. Holiday beat him in the 150-yard backstroke at the AAU meet. The defeat was the first for Kiefer in eight years.
In his first two months of varsity competition, Holiday broke two of Kiefer's world records, lowering the 100-yard backstroke mark to 57 seconds and the 200-meter standard to 2:22.9. In August 1943, the NCAA also recognized Holiday as the holder of the new world record in the 150-yard backstroke with a mark of 1:31.5. Shortly thereafter, Kiefer was asked to audition for the role of "Tarzan", but answered the call of arms instead, joining the U.S. Navy.
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